At the End of the World
by PowPowa
Summary: It was one of the most ridiculous ways for zombies to ever overtake the world. Nanobot zombies? What? And 95% of the world population is gone? GumixPiko, zombie slaying, filthy mouths, character death, and occasional angsting.
1. Prologue

It happened in the summer of 2032.  
>It had been a passing fad to prepare for it twenty years ago, but no one thought anything of it. It was cool to read about such things happening, but what if they did?<p>

And they did.

It was one of the most ridiculous ways for zombies to ever overtake the world. Nanobot zombies? What? Is that some bad sci-fi film's plot? And what do you mean, over 95% of the human population was destroyed within the first five months?

That's such a shitty idea for a book! It's not like it'll ever happen, right?

Right.

* * *

><p>Gumi only survived the take over because of a series of strange and seemingly impossible coincidences. One, her father was a huge medieval weapon otaku, and had no qualms about leaving his claymore cabinet unlocked. Two, her mother was a religious fanatic who thought technology was the spawn of Satan and wouldn't let her get the nanobot injection when she was six. Three, they lived in a relatively rural town far, far away from Tokyo and other such population centers.<p>

Most importantly, both of them were on vacation in Osaka the weekend that the infestation rate in Japan hit 56%. You might say this is a pretty bad card to deal someone, but if they had been at home that weekend, Gumi wouldn't have lived. Hell, her surviving at all was a miracle in and out of itself. Gumi was the epitome of normal, kind of pretty, maybe could just be famous one day, and bubble machine. She was someone you couldn't "have dirty thoughts" about- she was just impossible to imagine as something other than a clueless, bubbly teenage girl. If you drew up a list of people least likely to survive an invasion of "fast" zombies, she would be at rock bottom, right after the most effeminate lead singer of an emo band you could think of.

But the first time a zombie made the mistake of wandering into her apartment, she ended it. No, she _murdered the hell out of it_ with an authentic claymore. And when she realized that her parents were not coming back from their ill-fated trip to Osaka, she left her neat little home without a trace of regret. Gumi was still a bubble machine, but she was a dangerous bubble machine. She had never held a sword before, but it became to feel as though it was just an extension of her arm. You couldn't recognize her from before-  
>a phantom girl with wild green hair, splattered in blood.<p>

* * *

><p>In 2025, they began mass-marketing artificial AI and androids. All of them came equipped with Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. By 2030, you couldn't tell the difference between an android and a human, even if you squinted really damn hard.<br>Of course, with androids come idiots who want to hack them. And hack them they did. Though it was a life sentence and the destruction of the modified android, there were some who even disabled the source code of the android itself: the Three Laws.  
>By the outbreak in 2032, over one hundred humans and fifty-six androids had fallen to this law. In hindsight, maybe destroying those androids was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea.<p>

When the outbreak began, it soon became clear that it was. The nanobots could not infect androids, but unfortunately, the androids still looked human. They still had a whiff of humanity about them. And though one zombie is easy to run from, in a swarm, like the one that overtook Tokyo, it didn't matter how fast the androids ran. It didn't matter to the zombies that they were machinery, because by the time they realized it wasn't a human, bits and pieces would be everywhere.

All the zombies noticed was that they could not fight back, because of the Three Laws.

Well, you read that hacking thing earlier, right?  
>Right.<p>

Because Piko just happened to be one of those hacked androids, and that's why he was still running. And fighting, and killing. He was very calm and logical about it, because his circuitry understood that those things weren't human. If they were not human, then he had free license to kill as many of them that were there. So he did.

The weekend that the infestation rate hit 56%, Piko had killed a human anyway.  
>It was a big deal, to say the least, in the media. A hacked android, right here in our little town? Outrageous!<br>But if you just looked at the media and didn't explore the actual story behind it, Piko would label you an idiot.  
>That Hiroshi boy who the media labeled as a poor, misguided teenager?<br>Bull. Shit.  
>He was a sadistic, perverted bastard, and Piko knew it better than anyone. That was why he'd murdered him in the first place- he'd been hurting Miki. <em>Miki<em>. And Piko wasn't going to sit there and watch, and maybe say something uplifting to her later again. So he'd killed him, end of story, because he loved Miki.

And that wasn't the worst of it.  
>Because of the outbreak at the official "Android Deactivating Centre". They must've thought Miki lacked the Three Laws too. So Piko had been where none of them could reach him, locked in, and they'd torn up Miki.<br>They'd torn up Miki, right in front of him.  
>And so when he finally found his way out of that place, when the world had reduced itself to drunken chaos and screaming survivors, he held a cufflink with a star on it.<p>

* * *

><p>Gumi had not expected to find a crowd of them so big in the stretch of desolate country she was in, and she was getting tired of slashing them apart for the first time. Her arms were screaming, and she wanted to scream with them. Her clothes were shredded (aside from a nice orange jacket she'd looted a few hours ago from an Prettily Angelic) and she couldn't tell whether or not she was hitting anything any more.<br>" Die, die, die, die, die!" she was chanting, trying to keep their snapping jaws away. Of course, she was now getting backed up beside the wall of a building, so her chance of surviving that? Uh-uh. Zip. Nada. One of them had caught her cufflink earlier, and she knew it was only a matter of time- but everything on Earth be damned if she wasn't taking most of them out with her. Splash, thwack, slice, and rolling, obviously angry heads all around. If someone who she'd known Before had seen her now, they would have immediately decided they'd lost it. That grinning, blood-covered caricature of a female could never be that bubble machine Gumi.  
>At last, fate called, and she slipped in the blood pooling at her feet. Her left ankle twisted at an awkward angle that ankles shouldn't twist at. She didn't scream, just sank back against the wall and started swinging at their legs instead. She knew that she wouldn't be getting back up, because there were still at least ten of them left standing, and even the ones missing the bottom of their legs were in no hurry to die. Besides, her ankle hurt like hell.<br>She didn't mind. Hers wasn't a very decent story anyway.  
><em>Bam, bam, bam.<em>

Gunfire, and two of them fell down.  
>There was a young-ish man with white hair holding a Glock 17 standing there casually, like he had all the time in the world to aim.<br>" Ah, that's why they were congregating there. I thought that was odd."  
>Gumi almost fainted of the shock of seeing another person, and one who didn't seem to give a rat's ass about finding a blood-covered teenage girl at the end of her final showdown, at that.<p>

The speech and gunfire distracted them, and they stumbled towards him. Once again, that burst of gunfire and falling bodies. And again. He didn't seem fazed by them at all.

" Anyway, we're not in some tragic soap opera, so get up and let's-"

She started crying. Not like petty little girl tears, like all the times she'd cried in the past. waah, I wish my mom was alive. Waah, I wish my friends were alive.  
>No, she was really <em>crying<em>.

* * *

><p>AN: Oh Lord. Zombie!fic with ax-crazy Gumi and traumatized/ax-crazy Piko. This is going to be interesting. So, like, if you want trivia, I'll give you trivia!  
>-Glock 17s actually hold nineteen rounds. They don't have as much of a kick to them as other guns, though.<br>-I chose a claymore over a katana because as cool as they are, _katanas are not good zombie-slaying instruments._ Claymores are much more likely to cut through a spinal column without shattering into spork bits.  
>-Artificial intelligence is expected to reach human level in 2021.<br>-Nanobot zombies can actually happen. I've got a link to my resources on my profile page.  
>Review for zombie-slaying!<p> 


	2. Just A Bit

_He hated that stupid girl who kept talking about how wonderful her dreams were._

_And one day, coming home from running an errand for the lazy bastard who wrote his programming, she was crying, curled up in the corner._

_He didn't know that androids could cry, or why she was crying so honestly._

_" Miki, can't you get up?"_

* * *

><p>" Hey, can't you get up?" he asked, walking over to her. Well, no, on closer inspection she couldn't. Her ankle looked like it was bent at a non-Euclidean angle, and it probably hurt like hell. Damn his luck. He'd finally found some sentient being in this wasteland and she would be limping around like zombie bait for at least a week.<p>

" I... wha... I'm sorry," she choked out, and wiped the tears from her face. It left a smudge of blood on her face. It was oddly jarring to see something like that- even with the many corpses scattered around her. " I can't get up..."

Now, another dilemma.  
>Even if he wasn't human, and wasn't Three Laws-compliant, he didn't like knowingly letting humans die. But she'd said it herself, she couldn't get up. And she looked fairly psychotic, what with all of the blood, ripped up clothing, and the <em>sword<em>, which she had a death grip on.

" If you set your sword do-"  
>" No." she narrowed her eyes and tightened her grip on the sword slightly, and it reminded him of an injured animal trapped in a corner. Of course she wasn't setting the sword down, the sword was her lifeline. That was an insanely stupid thing to suggest.<p>

" I'll help you up. I'll hand it to you afterwards, okay?" he reasoned cautiously. She hesitantly dug the sword into the ground a bit, and he hesitantly extended his hand to her. She grabbed his wrist and he pulled her up.  
>" Put your arm around my neck, and I'll get your sword," he instructed, and she followed suit. Had she flinched a little when she did? She must've been shaky. He bent a bit, awkwardly, and pulled the sword out from the soil. Damn, it was heavy. How did she carry it around?<p>

* * *

><p>" Now, we need to find a place to stay for a bit until your ankle's better," he instructed, as she limped beside him. They were in an alleyway, because he said that they'd need to avoid those <em>things<em> as best as they could. As it was,_ they_ were probably going towards where he'd fired the gun earlier.

" Why?" Gumi asked quietly. He glanced over at her, with a look like he was evaluating her sanity.

" Why are you helping me?" she eloborated, her nails digging into his shoulder a bit. Just a bit. And it made him wonder why as well.

" Because I need someone to talk to," he reasoned, " if I don't, I'll go insane."

She glanced over at him, evaluating his sanity.

" Why does it matter if you're crazy in this apocalyptic hell?" she inquired. He laughed a little. Just a little. It made Gumi want to laugh as well.

" I just want to keep the little bit of humanity I have left. It's not really that important to living, but if I lose that, what'll I have left?" They were silent for a moment. She realized that she'd been neglecting the pain in her leg, and that it seemed to hurt even more.

" That makes sense," she replied, trying to shift her weight even more. _It's kind of ironic as well_, she added silently. " Where are we going, anyway?"

He laughed a little, yet again.

" Are you familiar with this section of the prefecture at all?" he asked.

" No. I've never been all that far from my house, really," she admitted. Her ankle was throbbing; it felt like a mouse or some other small mammal was burrowing into it. She looked down at it suspiciously. Nothing was there, of course, besides her boots.

" Right now we're on the outskirts of a residential district. A bit farther from here, there's a house right next to a video game store, owned by the store's owner. Obviously, they're dead, and it's the closest house to here. So we'll stay there for a while."

" How do you know so much about it?"

He looked up at the sun for a moment. The sun, something that is supposed to protect and give life. It fails pretty miserably at its job, if that wasn't obvious.

" I've been there a few times, running errands for a guy I knew," he answered vaguely.

Gumi looked up at the sun as well. It seemed unreal, somehow. Because in an apocalyptic hell you normally don't see the things you're used to just sitting there, existing as they always have.

" I don't know why I expected it to be different," she whispered.

" What?"

" It's nothing..."

"Okay."

Something grabbed her shoulder.

* * *

><p>AN: Cliffhangers are so wonderful. Also note how I fail at writing conversations. The tone of this one is different since it's a bit filler-ish and I was listening to a different genre while writing it instead of the stuff I was listening to while I was writing the first chapter. So, sorry about that. Trivia time?  
>Non-Euclidean Angles- An angle that doesn't follow Euclidean rules. Go look up M.C. Escher's artwork if you want some examples; don't try to comprehend them. They are impossible to comprehend.<br>Claymore weight- Claymores are heavy as hell. I don't think I mentioned this in the trivia of the last chapter, but you have to acquire an arm for them. It's probably very difficult without formal training.  
>Prefecture- If you somehow do not know this, what we call states in the US are called prefectures in Japan. There are a few differences, but I'm too lazy to write them out.<br>Why a video game store? Why not a gun store?- No, guys. Just _no_. The last place you go during the zombie apocalypse -or any horrible violent disaster, at that- is a gun store. That place will be jam-packed with frenzied idiots trying to loot it while the owners -who will DEFINITELY be there- are shooting them all down. So unless you've got as much porn, alchohol and cigarettes as you can carry and live in a very rural area, don't even think of the gun store (also of note: money will have no value; play up to people's addictions and excesses when you want something).  
>Alleyway- I don't know how well an alleyway would work if you're hiding during the zombie apocalypse, but I don't recommend having conversations in one if that's the case. Vagrant zombies will probably hear.<br>"What?""it's nothing...""Okay." - Set up along the same structure as the endings to Hachi's earlier songs; the girl will say something softly, the boy asks a question, and she replies, "it's nothing..." or something along those lines. No idea why I included that here; it's certainly not the end of the story. It'll probably end up being a repeating theme.

Vocaloid belongs to Yamaha; Piko belongs to Ki/oon, and Gumi belongs to Internet Co.


End file.
